Challenges

With a large mobile workforce working on lots of rail, metro and highway sites on many projects spread across a very large area, the Kelly Group found itself beset with huge difficulties in keeping all stakeholders – senior management, project managers, the commercial team, the customer, the regulatory authorities, admin staff and the on-site workforce – up-to-date with the information they required. For example, they had problems getting the answers to questions like these:

On-Site Foreman: What sites and work is my team assigned to today?

Project Manager: Is work on schedule? What time did the on-site team start and finish on this site today?

Commercial Team: What costs have been incurred today? Are we within margin?

Health & Safety Officer: Has there been a serious incident on any site? Have risks been assessed? Are there any serious risks? What info do we provide to the customer?

Customer, Operations Director: Is work on schedule? Is it within budget? What is the cost of change requests? Why has worked stopped on this site: was there a serious incident? Was there a problem getting access, etc.?

In order to cope, a mish-mash of systems and processes (paper forms, Excel spreadsheets, an online tool for uploading photographs, digital cameras, mobile phones, etc.) had built up over time to try to solve the problems but was creaking under the strain and would soon break. A large central admin staff were required to gather and co-ordinate the information on paper forms and Excel spreadsheets.

Solution

Ultan Technologies worked with the Kelly Group to understand their business and determine their requirements. We helped them streamline their business processes and then designed and built the KWPS system around the new processes to solve their problems.

A single integrated system to gather and supply all the required information to all stakeholders including the customer

A custom tablet application is used by the on-site workforce

A cloud-hosted web app is available to all users

The on-site workforce uses tablets to find out what sites and work they are assigned and to enter information and take photographs

All data entered on-site via tablet is submitted and available to all relevant system users as soon as a 3G data connection is available